Case highlights dangers of social networking

Our generation finds itself in the middle of a storm of Internet dating sites, Facebook and various other friend-finders. The Web hasn’t been a safe place for kids to surf for some time now, but young adults shouldn’t be ignorant to its possibilities or dangers.

Currently, these dangers are being illustrated as East Lansing’s 54-B District Court deals with charges against Takashi Higuchi, a 35-year-old MSU instructor who reportedly was sexually involved with a 13-year-old girl. The two met through the Internet dating site passion.com.

Higuchi claims he thought the girl was 18. Her profile on the Web site listed her age as 30.

After meeting in person at the Charlotte Community Library, the two proceeded to Higuchi’s apartment, where they reportedly had sex.

Higuchi was subsequently charged with three counts of criminal sexual conduct and one count of kidnapping.

In a society as cautious and aware as ours, it’s important for teenagers especially to be aware of the dangers that can be found on any Web site that connects people. The news is littered with stories of predators preying on younger Internet users. NBC has gone so far as to make a television show about it, and this story seems to be taken right out of an episode.

It’s a fact that people use social networking sites, such as passion.com, for purposes that their founders did not intend. People need to be aware that those they are speaking to might not be who they claim and might have intentions that are counter to that they are representing.

We know that this isn’t exactly a revelation. Odds are that you’ve had after-school specials and public service announcements driving this very point blaring at you for a good portion of the past decade. But this case is a reminder that these warning should be more than just background noise.

The lessons this case illustrate easily can be extended to other sites such as craigslist.com. It’s perfectly normal for a seller of an item and a buyer to meet up in real life to make an exchange. Although most of these transactions occur as any other normal sale would, there are always those few that end up making headline news.

People need to remember to meet people in a well-lit and public area to avoid a situation such as the victim of this case faced.

It also should be remembered that when you upload any bit of information up to the Internet, it’s there permanently. There are multiple Web sites devoted to archiving the Internet, and even Google offers a snapshot of a Web page — called a cache — that can often be clicked upon during a standard search.

If nothing else, it should be remembered that employers often do background checks before making job offers, and more than one person has lost a potential job to information found on these sites.

Until everyone learns to take these lessons to heart, we hope this case will serve as a sobering reminder that these events are not just fodder for television.